Latest articles on counselling and therapy

Eating disorders can involve eating too little or too much, and/or becoming obsessed with body weight and body shape. Normally, someone with an eating disorder will exhibit an unhealthy relationship with food, their body and themselves to the point where it has taken over their life and made them ill.
You might be reading this as a person who suffers from an eating disorder, or may know someone close to you who suffers from one. Whatever your situation, in this article, I will briefly describe...

Getting through the holiday season without relapse is, in my opinion, easier than the ‘post-holiday blues’.
It is vital to be aware of the dip in mood, boredom, isolation, loneliness, disappointment and many other emotions that will also come up during the celebrations but will also be very prevalent afterwards.
I have worked for over 15 years with addictions and eating disorders and it is always after an event that a person is more vulnerable to relapse and I have seen it.
It is...

There are plenty of commonly known, recognised and talked about adverse health issues connected with bulimia, which may affect those with the illness. These can include hair loss, tooth decay, heart palpitations, brittle nails, lethargy, swollen salivary glands, dry skin and indigestion to name but a few; however, two major health implications which are inter-connected seem to receive virtually no mention or recognition and they appear to go relatively unnoticed, thus remaining out of...

Eating is one of our innate survival drives that initiates appetite, resulting in the intake of food. Like breathing and reproduction, these drives are hardwired into every human being.
Most of us think about food daily – what we’ll cook for dinner, what we need to shop for, dining out etc. This is normal.
It is considered typical at times of stress that we may eat less, or have no appetite. i.e. loss of a loved one or a traumatic event can induce a suppressed appetite. This is...

What is self-harm? It is an intentional act of inflicting harm to oneself. The self-harming behaviour we are most familiar with is cutting. This involves cutting the superficial or deeper layers of the skin, typically on the arms or legs. Cutting is over-represented by social media, and so it has entered in to our language and is now widely spoken about. Consequently, other self-harming behaviours have been overlooked and maintain unheard of, and some are not even recognised as acts of...

According to BEAT research (2015) eating disorders affect 750,000 people in the UK. If you binge and purge you may find yourself in a situation where you feel stuck; you know that you have issues with your eating and yet you are unsure how to go about getting the help that you might need. It might be that you restrict your eating or it might be that you recognise that you binge food and purge after eating. It might be that you eat too much and are overweight or it might be that you overexercise...

Eating problems and disorders are common, so it is helpful to know that among the potentially effective treatments available there is one within the field of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends these specially adapted forms of CBT for bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder and mixed states ('eating disorder not otherwise specified' - EDNOS) are first-line for self-help and therapist supported treatments of choice....

On the face of it the two main eating disorders, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, are at the opposite ends of the spectrum. The person suffering from anorexia is in control of her eating and her life. The person suffering from bulimia is not.The reality is that neither the anorexic nor the bulimic is in control. The difference between them is that the anorexic thinks she is in control while the bulimic knows she is not.Over two thousand years ago Heraclitus pointed out that at their...